Schoeck_2010_EnvyATheoryOfSocialBehaviour.pdf

82 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ENVY
same time being combined with an almost equally fanatical attachment
to the principle of eqUality. Freud writes:
Thus social feeling is based upon the reversal of what was first a hostile
feeling into a positively-toned tie in the nature of an identification. So far as
we have hitherto been able to follow the course of events, this reversal
seems to occur under the influence of a common affectionate tie with a
person outside the group. We do not ourselves regard our analysis of
identification as exhaustive, but it is enough for our present purpose that we
should revert to this one feature-its demand that equalization shall be
consistently carried through .... Do not let us forget, however, that the
demand for equality in a group applies only to its members and not to the
leader. All the members must be equal to one another, and a single person
superior to them all, but they all want to be ruled by one person.
The sporadic outbursts of hostility encountered by anyone who questions
the principle of the idea of equality might, on the basis of Freud's
finding, be partly explained by the fact that people harbour this idea all
the more unconditionally and fanatically for having repressed and transformed
into a feeling of solidarity their original sibling jealousy or other
form of envy.
As it happened, many of Freud's followers, and especially those in the
Anglo-Saxon countries, were politically committed people, to whom the
literal implementation of the concept of equality meant a great deal. This
may explain why no one really seemed to have wanted to pursue the
implications of Freud's initial grasp of envy for questions of social policy.
In 1950 the psychoanalyst Franz Alexander, however, directly questioned
Karl Marx's theory in the light of Freud's view of envy, pointing
out that 'if class struggle is the essence of social life, it must be based
upon human psychology. . . . Why should the dictatorship of one of the
groups lead to a millennium of social justice? Obviously it can be
achieved only by a miraculous change of human nature .... ' Alexander
then explored the origin of the sense of social justice, along the lines of
Freud, and left little hope that this change of human nature, to fit a social
theory, is likely to be forthcoming since 'envy and competition are
deeply rooted in early family life and are latently present in the adult and
influence his relationship to other members of society. ,8
8 Franz Alexander, 'Frontiers in Psychiatry,' in Frontiers in Medicine, New York,
1951, pp. 9-12.